"I torture myself by replaying embarrassing memories from my past incessantly"
I struggle to understand how one can 'replay' a memory if they can't get video (imagery) in their head. :)
You probably meant something else here, but I can't quite grasp it. I'm probably about a 3 on that scale, where I can still get mental visuals, but they're fuzzy (or even get some details wrong), especially after 30 or 40 years.
I don't narrate my entire life but I will mentally think things to myself, about myself. Although I grew up fairly alone so I tend to do it out loud as well, whenever I'm alone, such as driving. I can think silently, but doing it out loud is comforting and helps me focus, if that makes any sense.
I use the word ‘replay’ because that is the idiom that conveys what I mean, in common language terms. What is happening at these times is the same as any thought I have - I think about the facts of the event I am remembering, recalling it purely as a sequence of events, but there are no ‘pictures’ or ‘sounds’ involved.
My memories are exclusively the ‘facts’ of the matter (as I believe them to be) with no imagined representation of any sensory data (sight & hearing mainly, but neither olfactory or tactile sensations either).
So do you not have a smell or taste evoke a memory? For example, I have had pizza that reminded me of what we would have at my grandparents' house for Sunday supper. And I remembered tasting the same thing before. Or I hear a song and remember a kiss with a girl or maybe a day in school it was playing. It can be emotionally evocative, but it sounds like all you have is computer recall, without any sensation? (I don't mean it in a bad way, and I'm not put off by you or anything; I just am trying to understand it in terms that make sense to me)
I have the same problem when trying to understand the phenomena of visualising/having mental imagery - there’s no frame of reference for me to comprehend it because I would need to be able to do it to know what it’s like. And people seem to have enormous difficulty describing it in only words as it is a part of an individuals Qualia - like how we have no way to know whether we all see the colour RED exactly the same or not.
Smells do trigger memories, on occasion. But they are of course devoid of any character that one could describe as ‘mental imagery. I of course cannot ‘imagine’ smells or tastes and create a facsimile of them that I perceive as those senses.
Hmm. The closest I can think of to explain it is that you presumably know what it's like to look at a picture of, say, an apple printed on a sheet of paper. And you must be able to remember doing it (but apparently not picture it? Maybe you just think the words "I saw a printout of a picture of an apple earlier today" ?) ... seeing it in your mind is sort of like looking at it, close your eyes and (for me) I can imagine a fuzzy image. I don't actually SEE it, it's still dark, but my brain can access the imagery and I can 'see' it in my thoughts, not a literal visual.
With Non-Fiction, I always read rapidly. Same goes for simple fiction like YA or books by easy-to-read authors like Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett.
With more in depth, visually descriptive books like Tolkien’s works, I often find I read without grasping it or drift off completely and have to re-read passages over and over until it sticks.
The slower a book moves through plot (focussing on description of things rather than events) the harder I find it to read.
As far as complex maths is concerned, I don’t do it because I’m terrible at mathematics.
Simple sums I do the same as anyone else, just without imagery. I can’t explain it really, I just think entirely in imageless concepts. I don’t see anything, I am just AWARE of the concepts.
For example, you might ask me to calculate 63 divided by 3. I then become aware that 60 is a multiple of 3, then I become aware that there are 3 twenties in 60, then I become aware that that leaves me with one more 3 in the large integer (63) and then I finally become aware that I must add that single 3 to the 20 to arrive at the correct answer of 21.
The exact same thing happens if I think of a horse, I don’t SEE one, I just become aware of the concept of a horse and the fact that they exist.
You've just described my inner workings to a T. I came across aphantasia last year, and only then realised that - as you say - certain artistic tropes aren't made up to get a story told, but are actually real for some people. I've managed very nicely without any of this weirdness for over six decades, so I'm not going to add a label to myself for something that doesn't affect my life one jot, but it is an interesting observation.
After reading this post and the comments, especially the way people put quotes around "see" and "hear" I'm not sure I'm sold on the notion that these are different qualia. You've studied this...are there any neurological studies showing brain structure differences or anything like that?
My internal monologue isn't anything like audio, I could just as easily say I have an internal chatroom...it's just thinking words. Ditto for visualizing things--almost entirely unlike vision, just thoughts of things I've seen. Do you not have that? Or do you think other people have more than that?
Your experience sounds not too dissimilar to mine. Based on what I’ve learned on this subject and how you describe your experience, I’d say you have Aphantasia. I would recommend asking your friends/family to picture an apple/horse/favourite song and describe the character of their imagined imagery/sound. I’m willing to bet most of them say they can absolutely see/hear things in their head.
It's the "in their head" and "Mind's Eye" that throw it all off for me, though. What I'm describing about my experience is absolutely what I've always thought those words referred to. I don't know what other words I'd expect people to use. The only words we have for the thought of a sound or the thought of a color are analogies to actual sight and hearing.
You do provide that this concept is mostly built around self-reported experience. I'm just not so sure the difference in self-reporting here is a difference in actual sensory capabilities, so much as a difference in frameworks for understanding perception. Unless someone is claiming they can't tell the difference between "in their head" and actual sight and sound--and I presume we both acknowledge hallucinations are a whole different thing--then the exact same perception can be described by one person as "I was having a thought," another as "I was listening to my inner monologue" and yet another as "God was speaking to me in my heart" with the difference between them all being entirely in belief system and worldview, nothing physiological. I think the extent to which these are actually interchangeable sensory experiences kind of matters, which is why I'm speaking up skeptically--but you're really forthright about the limits of our empirical data here, and I truly mean no disrespect to your study of this. This is really interesting!
Having no words to describe it is the main problem here. 95% people have the common trait of being able to visualise so the lexicon we have evolved as a species reflects that. People like me who can't visualise can only use the idioms and colloquial memes that preexist in language to describe our own thoughts, which muddies the discourse. No language seems to exist that allows the necessary distinction.
I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggests this is an entirely different quality of thought in people. My son and I are both Aphants, but when we talk about this to his mother, she says she can literally see things in her mind. She can describe details by focusing on them and reporting them back.
I say 'think of a pink elephant' and she looks up for a brief second and then describes the cartoon, pink elephant that she's observing, claiming its right in front of her.
I once asked 'can you just see Chris Hemsworth naked whenever you want?' She just smiled coyly and said 'Well now I am'.
My friend Brad is fascinated by this subject because he is on the entirely opposite side of the spectrum (hyperphantasia), where his mental imagery is so vivid and photographically realistic, that he claims it can be indistinguishable from reality. He says he can replay a movie he knows well in his head (with dialogue, score and in full colour) at will and just sit there watching it. Says it keeps him entertained while waiting in the doctors office or travelling.
I've asked these guys and everyone else to describe 'exactly where' this imagery appears and they have all struggled to say other than vague lines like 'I don't know. It's just in my mind. Like it's there but not in the real world'. This is the part I struggle to comprehend but all visualisers report a similar setup. It still freaks me out.
The ability to voluntarily conjure up mental imagery in the ‘Mind’s Eye’ that the subject perceives as something that they can ‘see’ is common to at least 95% of subjects tested across this field of study. Dating back to the Francis Galton’s work in the 1800s and into the present day with Aphantasia studies, particularly at Exeter University (Zemen et al).
Most research centres around self reported experience of subjects but several methods for gathering empirical data have been developed in recent years. My favourite is the fact that, when asked to imagine the sun rising over the horizon, the pupils of those who can people who can visual dilate whereas the pupils of Aphants do not. (That data is from one isolated study though).
The prevailing theory for the cause is a ‘fault in the wiring’ between two brain regions - this type of cognitive function (visualisation) is supported by the functional connection between the hippocampus and the visual-perceptual cortex’.
This is so wild. I "hear" stuff all the time. I have imaginary conversations in my head a lot. I mentally compose posts for Substack. I hear music. I can visualize a route to give better driving directions. I'm hearing this comment as I'm writing it. But unless I'm really down the bunny trail, it doesn't interfere with anything I'm doing.
I’m a four on the aphantasia scale, and I worked for 27 years as a scientific illustrator. I have to have things to look at to draw, a model, photo, scene , etc. I sometimes help my dim imagery by drawing pictures in the air, which I can see about as well as in my head, as dim transparent outlines, and they remain visible, sort of, for several seconds. I have a lot of inner monologue, though, and music will stay in my head for too long. I once quit an already horrible job because the Musak playing at work wouldn’t go away. I would wake up at 2 AM and Whitney Houston would be singing in my head. I have very vivid dreams sometimes, in full color. My daughter and granddaughter report they also lack imagery.
What about reading? Do you vocalize the words in your head as you read? What about planning a speech? For example, you've been out drinking with the boys all afternoon and now you are headed home to face the wrath of your better half? How do you work out what to say? How do you string words together and know if they will (or will not) sound good together? In this example, the voice in my head will take on my wife, and then I'll roleplay in my head, creating variations of excuses until something sounds particularly pleasant. Do you have to speak out loud to formulate these things?
Or a more fundamental question, can you sub vocalize? Can you imagine yourself talking in your head? When I do it, I can always feel my throat slightly move, almost like I'm talking without talking. For me, the voice in my head **is** me. The only time the voice ever goes away is if I'm watching a movie, but in that case, I'm zoned out and not really conscious. It's only at the end of the movie will I snap out of the trance and be "me" again.
It's strange, but the voice is both me and not me at the same time.
In terms of planning conversations ahead of time, I can do this - it just doesn’t involved a ‘heard’ voice in my head. I never have any idea whether the words I’m gonna say fit together until after I’ve said them.
Song writing and creative writing (my main two hobbies) are retrospective activities - I iterate on what I’ve created after the fact in a trial by error sort of way.
I have no need to speak out loud to think. On the rare occasions where I do, I feel like a madman who is talking to himself so I avoid it.
I can’t imagine anything that resembles sound so no, I can’t imagine my own voice at all.
BTW, I feel the opposite when I become captivated by a good movie - I don’t zone out, quite the opposite, I become fully mentally engaged with it. Zoning out is what happens when I watch bad or boring movies. In fact, I hate so-called ‘turn your brain off’ movies (Transformers, Fast & Furious, Avatar) with a passion because switching off cognitive function seems antithetical to how I like to engage with art.
I have total visual aphantasia, but even I can't comprehend thinking without an internal monologue. Since I have no visuals, the voice in my head is all I have! I found it fascinating to learn that deaf people have an internal monologue where they either visualize sign language, or they silently sign with their bodies in a similar way to how people talk in their mind.
But yeah, when I switch the voice off in my head—nothing. I'm just reacting to my environmental without evaluating it. For me, thinking is the voice in my head—take it away and I'm just blank.
Aphantasiac here. I think I am quite different from you, though.
I can picture something for about half a second before it is gone. Sheep jumping. Ex-girlfriend in her underwear. Desert island. I can see it for a flash, and then it's gone (sheep jumping doesn't work for me for sleeping, but my ex-girlfriend in her underwear does). After that, I can't see it anymore, but I can give you a perfect description. Ask me to calculate the length of a diagonal of a cube, and I can see it for just long enough to start calculating. I can describe it to you, or draw it, but I can't see it.
I had no idea that other people could see things until I did a survey of friends, and they told me what they could see. I still didn't believe them until they thought I was an idiot.
I can play tunes in my head, though. I play them in my head and then on my piano. I can write a poem, an essay or have a practice speech or conversation. I can draw from memory too, even though I can't see the thing.
Oh no. I tried to close my eyes and picture an apple, and I got a swirly confusing mess of words and pictures; an apple, an Apple, an Adam's apple, a text book dissection of an apple, a picture of a snake, a page full of Victorian botanical water colour pictures depicting different varieties of apple, Gwyneth Paltrow...
The closest I could pick from that was 4 or 5. I then re-read the descriptions and chose to picture a very clear photographic image of an apple to meet criterion to score 1, closed my eyes and that image popped up.
I have what are called ruminating thoughts - stuff jumbled up in my head with NO order. I have to listen to a piece of music a million times, even then don't remember the tune.
My favourite is The Warsaw Concerto - I play it every night while cooking but ask me to hum it - I can't.
I have started taking Gaba (gamma amino butyric acid) at night. At last I can sleep. The ruminating thoughts are under control.
For my dissertation I had to draw mind maps and flow charts to help to order my thoughts and writings. I did a 'dump' then ordered it later. Its exhausting.
I’ve really enjoyed reading the comments on this post. Fascinating to hear so many different perspectives on all matters pertaining to Mental Imagery.
Upon reading them, I realised I should have signposted people to Alan Kendle’s excellent book Aphantasia: Experiences, Perceptions & Insights as it has been profoundly useful in my own research on the subject.
It features accounts from several people with varying levels of the condition and explains Aphantasia infinitely better than I ever could. Well worth a read if this subject interests you.
I remember you writing about this before. Still absolutely floors me.
Such an interesting topic to read about and learn about
Also, thanks for that surprising shout out 🥳🥳
Anytime. And thanks for reading
"I torture myself by replaying embarrassing memories from my past incessantly"
I struggle to understand how one can 'replay' a memory if they can't get video (imagery) in their head. :)
You probably meant something else here, but I can't quite grasp it. I'm probably about a 3 on that scale, where I can still get mental visuals, but they're fuzzy (or even get some details wrong), especially after 30 or 40 years.
I don't narrate my entire life but I will mentally think things to myself, about myself. Although I grew up fairly alone so I tend to do it out loud as well, whenever I'm alone, such as driving. I can think silently, but doing it out loud is comforting and helps me focus, if that makes any sense.
I use the word ‘replay’ because that is the idiom that conveys what I mean, in common language terms. What is happening at these times is the same as any thought I have - I think about the facts of the event I am remembering, recalling it purely as a sequence of events, but there are no ‘pictures’ or ‘sounds’ involved.
My memories are exclusively the ‘facts’ of the matter (as I believe them to be) with no imagined representation of any sensory data (sight & hearing mainly, but neither olfactory or tactile sensations either).
So do you not have a smell or taste evoke a memory? For example, I have had pizza that reminded me of what we would have at my grandparents' house for Sunday supper. And I remembered tasting the same thing before. Or I hear a song and remember a kiss with a girl or maybe a day in school it was playing. It can be emotionally evocative, but it sounds like all you have is computer recall, without any sensation? (I don't mean it in a bad way, and I'm not put off by you or anything; I just am trying to understand it in terms that make sense to me)
I have the same problem when trying to understand the phenomena of visualising/having mental imagery - there’s no frame of reference for me to comprehend it because I would need to be able to do it to know what it’s like. And people seem to have enormous difficulty describing it in only words as it is a part of an individuals Qualia - like how we have no way to know whether we all see the colour RED exactly the same or not.
Smells do trigger memories, on occasion. But they are of course devoid of any character that one could describe as ‘mental imagery. I of course cannot ‘imagine’ smells or tastes and create a facsimile of them that I perceive as those senses.
Hmm. The closest I can think of to explain it is that you presumably know what it's like to look at a picture of, say, an apple printed on a sheet of paper. And you must be able to remember doing it (but apparently not picture it? Maybe you just think the words "I saw a printout of a picture of an apple earlier today" ?) ... seeing it in your mind is sort of like looking at it, close your eyes and (for me) I can imagine a fuzzy image. I don't actually SEE it, it's still dark, but my brain can access the imagery and I can 'see' it in my thoughts, not a literal visual.
so us "normies" if we get a text from a friend we read it and that persons voice is narrating it.
Are you a speed reader? how do you do complex maths in your head?
With Non-Fiction, I always read rapidly. Same goes for simple fiction like YA or books by easy-to-read authors like Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett.
With more in depth, visually descriptive books like Tolkien’s works, I often find I read without grasping it or drift off completely and have to re-read passages over and over until it sticks.
The slower a book moves through plot (focussing on description of things rather than events) the harder I find it to read.
As far as complex maths is concerned, I don’t do it because I’m terrible at mathematics.
Simple sums I do the same as anyone else, just without imagery. I can’t explain it really, I just think entirely in imageless concepts. I don’t see anything, I am just AWARE of the concepts.
For example, you might ask me to calculate 63 divided by 3. I then become aware that 60 is a multiple of 3, then I become aware that there are 3 twenties in 60, then I become aware that that leaves me with one more 3 in the large integer (63) and then I finally become aware that I must add that single 3 to the 20 to arrive at the correct answer of 21.
The exact same thing happens if I think of a horse, I don’t SEE one, I just become aware of the concept of a horse and the fact that they exist.
You've just described my inner workings to a T. I came across aphantasia last year, and only then realised that - as you say - certain artistic tropes aren't made up to get a story told, but are actually real for some people. I've managed very nicely without any of this weirdness for over six decades, so I'm not going to add a label to myself for something that doesn't affect my life one jot, but it is an interesting observation.
After reading this post and the comments, especially the way people put quotes around "see" and "hear" I'm not sure I'm sold on the notion that these are different qualia. You've studied this...are there any neurological studies showing brain structure differences or anything like that?
My internal monologue isn't anything like audio, I could just as easily say I have an internal chatroom...it's just thinking words. Ditto for visualizing things--almost entirely unlike vision, just thoughts of things I've seen. Do you not have that? Or do you think other people have more than that?
Your experience sounds not too dissimilar to mine. Based on what I’ve learned on this subject and how you describe your experience, I’d say you have Aphantasia. I would recommend asking your friends/family to picture an apple/horse/favourite song and describe the character of their imagined imagery/sound. I’m willing to bet most of them say they can absolutely see/hear things in their head.
It's the "in their head" and "Mind's Eye" that throw it all off for me, though. What I'm describing about my experience is absolutely what I've always thought those words referred to. I don't know what other words I'd expect people to use. The only words we have for the thought of a sound or the thought of a color are analogies to actual sight and hearing.
You do provide that this concept is mostly built around self-reported experience. I'm just not so sure the difference in self-reporting here is a difference in actual sensory capabilities, so much as a difference in frameworks for understanding perception. Unless someone is claiming they can't tell the difference between "in their head" and actual sight and sound--and I presume we both acknowledge hallucinations are a whole different thing--then the exact same perception can be described by one person as "I was having a thought," another as "I was listening to my inner monologue" and yet another as "God was speaking to me in my heart" with the difference between them all being entirely in belief system and worldview, nothing physiological. I think the extent to which these are actually interchangeable sensory experiences kind of matters, which is why I'm speaking up skeptically--but you're really forthright about the limits of our empirical data here, and I truly mean no disrespect to your study of this. This is really interesting!
Having no words to describe it is the main problem here. 95% people have the common trait of being able to visualise so the lexicon we have evolved as a species reflects that. People like me who can't visualise can only use the idioms and colloquial memes that preexist in language to describe our own thoughts, which muddies the discourse. No language seems to exist that allows the necessary distinction.
I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggests this is an entirely different quality of thought in people. My son and I are both Aphants, but when we talk about this to his mother, she says she can literally see things in her mind. She can describe details by focusing on them and reporting them back.
I say 'think of a pink elephant' and she looks up for a brief second and then describes the cartoon, pink elephant that she's observing, claiming its right in front of her.
I once asked 'can you just see Chris Hemsworth naked whenever you want?' She just smiled coyly and said 'Well now I am'.
My friend Brad is fascinated by this subject because he is on the entirely opposite side of the spectrum (hyperphantasia), where his mental imagery is so vivid and photographically realistic, that he claims it can be indistinguishable from reality. He says he can replay a movie he knows well in his head (with dialogue, score and in full colour) at will and just sit there watching it. Says it keeps him entertained while waiting in the doctors office or travelling.
I've asked these guys and everyone else to describe 'exactly where' this imagery appears and they have all struggled to say other than vague lines like 'I don't know. It's just in my mind. Like it's there but not in the real world'. This is the part I struggle to comprehend but all visualisers report a similar setup. It still freaks me out.
The ability to voluntarily conjure up mental imagery in the ‘Mind’s Eye’ that the subject perceives as something that they can ‘see’ is common to at least 95% of subjects tested across this field of study. Dating back to the Francis Galton’s work in the 1800s and into the present day with Aphantasia studies, particularly at Exeter University (Zemen et al).
Most research centres around self reported experience of subjects but several methods for gathering empirical data have been developed in recent years. My favourite is the fact that, when asked to imagine the sun rising over the horizon, the pupils of those who can people who can visual dilate whereas the pupils of Aphants do not. (That data is from one isolated study though).
The prevailing theory for the cause is a ‘fault in the wiring’ between two brain regions - this type of cognitive function (visualisation) is supported by the functional connection between the hippocampus and the visual-perceptual cortex’.
https://elifesciences.org/articles/94916
This is so wild. I "hear" stuff all the time. I have imaginary conversations in my head a lot. I mentally compose posts for Substack. I hear music. I can visualize a route to give better driving directions. I'm hearing this comment as I'm writing it. But unless I'm really down the bunny trail, it doesn't interfere with anything I'm doing.
I have an inner monologue, but what you described thinking about fits me to a T. More proof, I suppose, that they're different things.
I’m a four on the aphantasia scale, and I worked for 27 years as a scientific illustrator. I have to have things to look at to draw, a model, photo, scene , etc. I sometimes help my dim imagery by drawing pictures in the air, which I can see about as well as in my head, as dim transparent outlines, and they remain visible, sort of, for several seconds. I have a lot of inner monologue, though, and music will stay in my head for too long. I once quit an already horrible job because the Musak playing at work wouldn’t go away. I would wake up at 2 AM and Whitney Houston would be singing in my head. I have very vivid dreams sometimes, in full color. My daughter and granddaughter report they also lack imagery.
What about reading? Do you vocalize the words in your head as you read? What about planning a speech? For example, you've been out drinking with the boys all afternoon and now you are headed home to face the wrath of your better half? How do you work out what to say? How do you string words together and know if they will (or will not) sound good together? In this example, the voice in my head will take on my wife, and then I'll roleplay in my head, creating variations of excuses until something sounds particularly pleasant. Do you have to speak out loud to formulate these things?
Or a more fundamental question, can you sub vocalize? Can you imagine yourself talking in your head? When I do it, I can always feel my throat slightly move, almost like I'm talking without talking. For me, the voice in my head **is** me. The only time the voice ever goes away is if I'm watching a movie, but in that case, I'm zoned out and not really conscious. It's only at the end of the movie will I snap out of the trance and be "me" again.
It's strange, but the voice is both me and not me at the same time.
In terms of planning conversations ahead of time, I can do this - it just doesn’t involved a ‘heard’ voice in my head. I never have any idea whether the words I’m gonna say fit together until after I’ve said them.
Song writing and creative writing (my main two hobbies) are retrospective activities - I iterate on what I’ve created after the fact in a trial by error sort of way.
I have no need to speak out loud to think. On the rare occasions where I do, I feel like a madman who is talking to himself so I avoid it.
I can’t imagine anything that resembles sound so no, I can’t imagine my own voice at all.
BTW, I feel the opposite when I become captivated by a good movie - I don’t zone out, quite the opposite, I become fully mentally engaged with it. Zoning out is what happens when I watch bad or boring movies. In fact, I hate so-called ‘turn your brain off’ movies (Transformers, Fast & Furious, Avatar) with a passion because switching off cognitive function seems antithetical to how I like to engage with art.
I get asked about my experiences with reading many times so I wrote my thoughts down… you can read them below - it became one of my most popular posts. https://open.substack.com/pub/thecommoncentrist/p/i-liked-the-book-better?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
I have total visual aphantasia, but even I can't comprehend thinking without an internal monologue. Since I have no visuals, the voice in my head is all I have! I found it fascinating to learn that deaf people have an internal monologue where they either visualize sign language, or they silently sign with their bodies in a similar way to how people talk in their mind.
But yeah, when I switch the voice off in my head—nothing. I'm just reacting to my environmental without evaluating it. For me, thinking is the voice in my head—take it away and I'm just blank.
Aphantasiac here. I think I am quite different from you, though.
I can picture something for about half a second before it is gone. Sheep jumping. Ex-girlfriend in her underwear. Desert island. I can see it for a flash, and then it's gone (sheep jumping doesn't work for me for sleeping, but my ex-girlfriend in her underwear does). After that, I can't see it anymore, but I can give you a perfect description. Ask me to calculate the length of a diagonal of a cube, and I can see it for just long enough to start calculating. I can describe it to you, or draw it, but I can't see it.
I had no idea that other people could see things until I did a survey of friends, and they told me what they could see. I still didn't believe them until they thought I was an idiot.
I can play tunes in my head, though. I play them in my head and then on my piano. I can write a poem, an essay or have a practice speech or conversation. I can draw from memory too, even though I can't see the thing.
Oh no. I tried to close my eyes and picture an apple, and I got a swirly confusing mess of words and pictures; an apple, an Apple, an Adam's apple, a text book dissection of an apple, a picture of a snake, a page full of Victorian botanical water colour pictures depicting different varieties of apple, Gwyneth Paltrow...
The closest I could pick from that was 4 or 5. I then re-read the descriptions and chose to picture a very clear photographic image of an apple to meet criterion to score 1, closed my eyes and that image popped up.
I have what are called ruminating thoughts - stuff jumbled up in my head with NO order. I have to listen to a piece of music a million times, even then don't remember the tune.
My favourite is The Warsaw Concerto - I play it every night while cooking but ask me to hum it - I can't.
I have started taking Gaba (gamma amino butyric acid) at night. At last I can sleep. The ruminating thoughts are under control.
For my dissertation I had to draw mind maps and flow charts to help to order my thoughts and writings. I did a 'dump' then ordered it later. Its exhausting.
I’ve really enjoyed reading the comments on this post. Fascinating to hear so many different perspectives on all matters pertaining to Mental Imagery.
Upon reading them, I realised I should have signposted people to Alan Kendle’s excellent book Aphantasia: Experiences, Perceptions & Insights as it has been profoundly useful in my own research on the subject.
It features accounts from several people with varying levels of the condition and explains Aphantasia infinitely better than I ever could. Well worth a read if this subject interests you.